Commuters wait for clarity on integrated Opal card

IT HAS been a long time coming, but Sydney public transport users got a first look at the city's ''Opal'' card last week.

But what Sydney residents do not know yet is what sort of fares they will pay once the card - with its understated gun-metal sheen and credit-card weight - starts working on buses, ferries and trains some time in 2014.

The Opal card ... an integrated public transport fare structure for Sydney expected in 2014.Credit:Kate Geraghty

Sydney is the only major city in Australia that does not have an ''integrated'' fare structure.

This means that apart from people holding expensive MyMulti weekly, monthly or yearly passes, anyone getting on a bus, train or ferry has to pay extra every time they board a new service.

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In other Australian cities, public transport passengers making the one journey are allowed to change between services without paying extra.

''People in Sydney ought to be embarrassed that everybody in Australia sorted this out between 40 and eight years ago,'' said Paul Mees, senior lecturer in transport planning at RMIT University in Melbourne.

As Fairfax Media's 2010 Transport Inquiry argued, the Opal, which will start trials on the Neutral Bay ferry route on Friday, is not actually necessary for a new fare structure for Sydney.

In Newcastle, State Transit bus passengers buy one-hour tickets, four-hour tickets, and all-day tickets. They can hop on and off as many buses as they like while those tickets are valid. State Transit bus passengers in Sydney, meanwhile, have to pay multiple fares for multiple trips.

But the introduction of the Opal is widely seen as an opportunity to rid the city of some of the perverse elements in Sydney's fare system.

And removing the penalties attached to changing services is regularly cited as the most important step.

''The old concept of going into and out of the CBD twice a day is decreasingly relevant for the modern traveller,'' said a transport engineer and blogger, David Caldwell.

More people are travelling to a wider array of destinations. This inevitably requires changing between multiple buses and trains, Mr Caldwell said.

''Getting rid of the penalty is important for that reason. But it is also important to enable people to utilise their journey more efficiently in the way that a car driver does,'' he said.

Sydney's fare system can also prevent commuters choosing the fastest way to get to their destination.

The fastest way to get from Bronte Beach to Central on public transport, for example, is to catch the 378 bus to Bondi Junction and change to a train. But this costs $2.30 more than staying on the 378 bus all the way to the city, which takes five minutes longer.

In other cities, ''zones'' determine how much public transport users pay.

There are two zones that cut across Melbourne, and commuters can use as many services as they want within those zones, but pay more for moving from one to another.

Dr Mees said two zones was too few.

There was a steep jump in ticket price for moving between the two, and some commuters drove to train stations inside Zone 1 to avoid the increase.

''The great advantage Sydney has in having delayed for so long is that there's lots and lots of experience to learn from,'' Dr Mees said.

In a 2008 article in Transit Australia, Mr Caldwell suggested 15 zones for greater Sydney. The advantage of this system would be a smaller jump in fares as commuters moved from one zone to another.

As for the government's approach, it remains unclear.

A spokesman for Action for Public Transport, Jim Donovan, said he had been told by a senior public transport bureaucrat that a proposal to integrate fares in Sydney had been put to the cabinet but not yet signed. The Transport Minister, Gladys Berejiklian, said Opal fares would be ''distance-based''.

This means commuters will pay according to how far they travel, but it is unclear if that distance will be measured by how the crow flies or by how many zones are passed.

It is also unclear if there will be different rates for catching buses, trains, trams and ferries, and if all interchange penalties will be abolished.

''We will release the fare structure in more detail next year,'' Ms Berejiklian said.